Thank you for the opportunity to present to you and welcome back into the Site C fray.

I wish to acknowledge the Songhees upon whose territory we are meeting.

You have heard the financials for BC Hydro and I will not go into those except to say that I am well informed of them by Eric Anderson of Gabriola Island who I believe presented to you yesterday, and it is only by fancy and deceitful accounting that the 80:20 ratio is maintained in order for a yearly dividend to be paid to the province by a virtually bankrupt BC Hydro.

The question here is: Do we need Site C and if so why?

In my view, we do not.

Over the last few years, the demand for electricity in BC overall has declined in spite of BC Hydro forecasts that it would increase. Dams built in conjunction with the Columbia River Water Control Agreement have served us well and it is my understanding that additional turbines could be fitted to these dams without affecting that agreement and of course more hydro could thus be generated should we require it.

We also have the environmentally disastrous and seasonal only operations called the run of the river projects from which BC Hydro has been obliged by the previous government to purchase their power at a higher rate than that for which they can sell that power either to Alberta or export it to the USA.

In that regard two points:

The State of California has designated our run of the river projects as environmentally unsound and “not green” and therefore will not purchase hydro from them. On January 15th 2014 the California Energy Commission found that our Run of the River projects did not conform to the California Renewable Energy Resources Act.

Then there is the FTA and now NAFTA article 605 which states that we (Canada ) can increase our percentage of energy exported to the USA but we cannot reduce it and any price change upwards must be agreed to by both our PM and the US President. This means that the promotional price set for 20 years by WAC Bennet of the Socreds is still in effect today as FTA was signed within that 20 years. Our current Minister of Foreign Affairs who has taken the renegotiations of NAFTA away from our Minister for Trade has shown no signs of wishing to even consider this and so it will not change.

One of the stated needs for Site C was for more power to be transmitted to Petronas, which has now pulled out of the infamous LNG production, and for mining companies such as Imperial Metals at Mount Polley Mine and probably the Red Chris Mine as well. Since both are already operating why do we need more hydropower for them?

One question as to the actual safety of the Site C is that the banks which are supposed to hold the “lake” are not stable and should the worst happen and the Site C collapse will it take out the other 2 downstream dams and how far into Saskatchewan will the resulting torrent of water flow?

There is no proven need for this dam and the cost of refurbishing the area is lower than that of completion.